


Different

by Frangipanidownunder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-26 01:08:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14390982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frangipanidownunder/pseuds/Frangipanidownunder
Summary: From this prompt: Since I am pretty obsessed with dad!Mulder I was thinking along the lines of a fic where it's primarily him interacting with his new daughter. The idea was that around 8-10 years old she comes home upset and Mulder weasels it out of her that she's being bulled at school because her dad is "old". In my head Mulder is probably fitter in his 60's than most 30-40 something dads, but hey ho. Kids can be cruel!





	Different

The note was ripped into four pieces, scattered between the old newspapers and a yellowing file of fake Bigfoot sightings he’d spilled coffee over. The recycling needed to be emptied and when he picked up the box, the contents fell out. He recognised Esther’s writing - that determined cursive she delivered usually with her tongue caught between her lips and her mother’s light frown of concentration. He taped the note together and sat looking at it as it lay on his desk, the golden spool of light from his lamp illuminating the crinkles and shadowing his daughter’s careful letters.

To Mom and Dad

You’re invited to Grade 5A’s Parents’ Day on Tuesday at 11 o’clock. Bring something from your job or from home that tells us about you or just share a story or two.

Esther S Scully-Mulder

Scully fingered the tape and sighed. “Why wouldn’t she let us know? One of us always used to go to these things at her other school.”

“She’s been a little down, lately. Don’t you think?” He’d offered to pitch for her at the weekend but she looked at the bat and shook her head, telling him she had some reading to do. When he checked in on her later, she wasn’t in her room and he found her outside tipping a load of ancient toys and puzzles, books and clothes into garbage bags.

“She’s changing,” Scully said. “Kids develop quicker these days.”

“She’s twelve, Scully.”

“And she’s not your baby girl any more, Mulder. The scholarship means she’s got more work to do. She’s having to negotiate hormones and study and the murky depths of the online world and things you don’t even want to think about. It’s a lot, these days. A lot.”

He swung around on the chair. Sometimes he fondly remembered hunting monsters and aliens and figured that job was easier than negotiating the travails of parenthood. He rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Nobody said this would be easy, Mulder,” she said, slipping her arms around his neck.

“Nobody doesn’t know what he or she is talking about,” he said, reaching up to kiss her cheek. “Nobody isn’t nearly 70 and a parent of a child still in grade school. What the hell were we thinking, Scully?”

She laughed, the sound still girlish, and he remembered her in that moment, hair copper-bright, eyes filled with a nostalgic passion that he recognised instantly, those perfect lips slightly apart. She had wrapped herself around him in that motel like she intended to devour him. The realms of possibility extended to infinity and together, on those starched foreign sheets, they lost years and rediscovered something of themselves. He hadn’t expected it. But it had changed them in ways they hadn’t been able to articulate. And then there was Esther.

Their daughter had been a balm over the festering sore that was William’s disappearance. On that damp and dismal pier, in a single heartbeat, when Scully had told him what the smoking bastard had revealed, Mulder’s life had been reduced to the icy fear of irrelevancy. But with her next breath, the realisation that he was going to be a father had taken root inside him and grown slowly and ever more warmly. He’d been frightened when she was born. Frightened of the tiniest, most fragile being he’d ever seen. The day they brought her home, he stepped into a new world. Everything that was important was right there, in his arms and in his heart. And just when he thought his heart couldn’t stretch or grow any more, Esther did something new.

Now, he pulled Scully down and the old desk chair squeaked. “Thinking is overrated.” He kissed her and she wriggled on his lap and the spark flared. It took him a little longer these days but she didn’t seem to mind.

“Ewwwww,” came the disgusted young voice from the doorway. “You two are so gross.” The way she crinkled her nose reminded him so much of Samantha. It ached to think about how much more his loss was magnified now he understood the lengths and breadths of parental love.

Scully’s giggle was slightly tempered by frustration and she slid from his grasp. He sighed as he watched her loop her arm through Esther’s and leave him to wallow in what might have been.

Over the next week, Esther shut herself in her room for most of each evening. She rolled her eyes in the worst Scully way when Mulder offered to take her Squatchin’. Her suit hung next to his on the hook by the back door and her boots still bore the muddy splatters from their previous encounter with dark shadows and mysterious noises. He tried talking to her, teasing her, baking her favourite muffins, showing her old photos of him and her mother in their ridiculous coats. None of his usual father-daughter favourites worked.

“I just want to read, Dad.”

“What are you reading?” he asked, hoping that she’d pat the end of the bed and let him sit with her a while.

“Nothing you’d know,” she said. He looked at the cover of the book. It was matte silver with an image of a downcast young woman half-turned away. The title and author name were too small for him to read without his glasses.

“I guess you’ve moved on from the Harry Potters?”

She looked up at him and tried for a polite smile but it was more of a patient grimace. “I never really liked them. All that wizardry and witchcraft stuff is not my thing.”

He tucked his opinion away and reached for the door.

“Dad,” she said after a beat. He turned round with a hopeful smile. “Can you shut the door on the way out?”

On Monday evening, after a painfully quiet meal where Esther pushed her food around her plate, Scully waited for her to shut her bedroom door and said, “We shouldn’t just show up tomorrow, if she doesn’t want us to come.”

“But she might be the only kid there without parents. Wouldn’t that make it even harder? She’s new. Familiar faces will help, surely?”

Scully put the dishes next to the sink. “I don’t know what to do, Mulder. She’s always been so close with us – with you especially - and now she’s just drifting away. If we show up without her consent, she’ll be angry. If we don’t show up, and this was just a cry for help, then we risk validating her already fragile self-confidence. We need to talk to her, find out what’s bothering her.”

Mulder stood behind her and massaged her tense shoulders. “She’s so much like you, Scully – reserved, self-contained. You must remember how hard it is to pull yourself out of that mindset.”

“I do.” She dotted soap suds on his nose and smiled sadly. “Get ready for some serious sparks, then.”

Esther’s room had the best view of the yard. Mulder had installed a windmill and when the sun was setting it filtered through the blades. When she was younger and looked forward to the end of the day when he’d read to her or run through a sanitised version of one of their cases, he’d sit on her bed and tell her that the golden shafts were her big brother William’s way of communicating with his family.

“He’s sending the warmest rays as a way of hugging you, Esther. He wishes he could be here but he can’t right now. This is the best he can do.”

“I think it’s pretty good,” she’d say and she’d hug him, extra tight.

Now, the sun’s rays were hitting the glass and he watched her for a moment, combing her fingers through the dusty slant of light. She hadn’t heard him come in and she gasped when he sat on the bed.

“Sorry, honey. I just wanted to see if you were okay. You were talking to Will?”

She shook her head. “I don’t believe in that stuff any more, Dad.”

“That’s a shame,” he said, “because opening your mind to the possibilities of life makes it seem less hard.”

Her jaw locked and she swung her legs round to sit on the edge of the bed. “Life is fine without all the voodoo mind control and mumbo jumbo telepathy crap. I’m not a little kid any more. You know what I think about when I see broken sunlight? I think about how my big brother is a selfish shit who won’t come back to say hello to his family.”

“Esther!” Scully joined them and stood with her hands on her hips. “It’s not like that.”

“You two are so dumb sometimes. You hide behind all the things you used to do, ‘back in the day’, and you have no idea what’s really going on under your noses. Will is never going to come back. You don’t really talk to him. It’s not real. You just think you do to make yourself feel better. It’s cruel to Dad really, to make him think that you have those conversations.

“And I was an accident. I know about Emily and I know about that smoking man and I know about all the stuff that was done to you both ‘back in the day’. Your lives were shitty and they were weird and now you’re stuck with me, out here in Nowhereville, compensating for all the bad things you went through. I don’t have any super powers. I don’t have alien blood. I’m just normal and boring and you can’t rescue me from anything so you’ve sent me to a school I don’t like because you have to make me special in some way. You just want me to be different. But I don’t. I don’t want to be different.”

“How do you know about that stuff, Esther? We haven’t told you some of that.” Scully’s voice cracked and Mulder brushed her cheek, putting his thumb over her lips and shaking his head slightly.

“I don’t know. Maybe Will told me,” she said, blazing. “But, wait. It couldn’t be, because guess what? People don’t communicate by telepathy!”

Mulder turned to his daughter. “Esther, you don’t need super powers or alien blood to be special. Do you know why we think you’re special, why we know you’re different? It’s because you’re you and you’re still here with us. You’re still here.”

Scully turned away. Esther’s shoulders slumped.

“And tomorrow, when we come to your parent’s day, we can talk to the Principal about pulling you out, if that’s what you really want.”

“Please don’t come tomorrow. I don’t need you to be there. I’ll be fine,” she grabbed a bunch of her duvet cover in her hands and squeezed it. “You don’t understand what it’s like.” Her voice was a fragile whisper. “You’re just…”

“Just what, Esther?”

She shook her head and the sun sunk lower, orange flames lighting up her room.

Through the window, Mulder could see Esther sitting towards the back of the library room. She was slightly apart from the other girls around her, who were chatting and giggling. Rows of chairs lined the sides. Outside the room, the other parents were variously in work clothes, casual dress, talking on cellphones, chatting comfortably with each other. Mulder and Scully seemed to be one of only three couples. A smartly dressed woman approached them, extending her hand.

“I’m Brenna, Alexia’s mother. I had to send my parents last year, couldn’t get away from a business conference. Life is so busy, isn’t it? Getting time off to come to these special days gets harder and harder. It’s wonderful when the extended family can step in. Who’s your grandchild?”

The door opened at that moment and the teacher ushered the parents in. Mulder whispered in Scully’s ear, “I told you I should have used that GreyBeGone stuff. Silver foxes are so 2018.”

“Hey,” she whispered back, “Silver or not, you’re my fox - 1993 to infinity.”

As they found seats midway up, Mulder saw Esther staring at them. Her face turned red and she cuffed away angry tears before faking her best smile at the girl sitting next to her.

The teacher smiled at Mulder and Scully. “Esther, your parents are here after all, why don’t you come to the front and let’s hear a little bit about your family.”

As they got into position there was a collective giggle and he heard one child say she though they were the grandparents. Mulder watched his daughter tilt her chin up higher, despite her clenched fists. In that moment, he saw himself, all the humiliations, the backhanded comments, the disbelief and headshaking he’d endured. Scully must have sensed his guilt because she squeezed his hand as they stood at the front of the room.

The teacher clapped her hands and the class fell silent. “These are Esther’s parents. I’m sorry, I can’t remember your names.

“This is Dana and my name is Fox,” he said and watched twenty kids smirk in unison.

A girl put her hand up and Mulder nodded to her. “Are you kidding?”

His eyebrows shot up as quickly as Esther’s lowered. “No, it’s on my birth certificate and everything,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“Alexia,” the girl said, “but anyone who’s anyone calls me Alex.”

Mulder nodded and turned to Scully and his daughter. “Well, Alex,” he said, “I hope you don’t mind me calling you that, because back in the day, I was someone. And so was Dana. I was Fox Freaking Mulder. And she was the Enigmatic Doctor Scully. And I promise you my birth name is Fox and having that name made me really good at two things. Anyone care to guess what they were?”

Esther’s impatient sigh cut through him, but a couple of kids raised their hands, so he pointed to a young boy with a mop of black curls springing from his head.

“Fighting?”

Mulder laughed with the rest of the class. But Esther’s expression remained grim. When they’d settled, he said, “Pretty good, I was going to say running, because violence is never really the answer to bullying. And having that name also made me good at being different. And being different has served me, and my family, well over the years.”

There was a look of mild confusion on Esther’s face and he almost saw her soften a little but when Alex asked what they did for a living, she scowled again.

“We used to be FBI agents investigating paranormal cases.”

“That must have been a hundred years ago. You’ve got to be retired,” Alex said. Esther shrugged her hands deeper into her pockets and looked at the floor like she hoped it might crack open and swallow her.

“We did retire. Well,” he looked at Scully, “we were asked to leave. Kind of like being expelled.”

There was a murmur around the room. The girl spoke again. “What did you do to get kicked out? Fail your eyesight test?”

The teacher went to cut in but held up his hand. He looked over to where the girl’s mother sat, but she was busy on her phone. “It is true that there are physical requirements to being an agent. Being able to see who to arrest is pretty important. But the reason we left the Bureau was because we had a habit of not following the rules. Of doing things a little differently.”

Mulder smiled at his daughter. He hoped the small flicker of her lips was a good sign. “Scully and I,” he started and it resulted in more giggling from the kids. Esther remained silent.

Scully held up her hand. “Mulder and I never did anything conventionally. We call each other by our last names. We investigated cases that required us to follow some pretty strange leads – photos of UFOs, sightings of Bigfoot, meeting alien abductees, breaking into secret government storage facilities.”

There was a round of oohs and aaahs from the audience which made Esther look up.

“I’m a scientist and I was assigned to keep Mulder on track, by providing reports and scrutiny…”

“She spied on me,” he said, and some of the kids laughed.

“Our division was called the X-Files and I learned pretty quickly that science didn’t always offer the answers I was expecting. I had to learn to think a little differently.”

“And,” Mulder added, looking at Esther. “I had to learn to be a little less selfish and share my work with the class. Or at least with Scully. It took me a while to get used to having a partner who questioned everything, who got me out of some sticky situations and who still showed up day after day. Someone who supported me through everything. That was a new experience for me.”

Esther shut her eyes and Scully pulled her closer.

“Did you ever meet an alien?” the boy with the curly hair asked. He was leaning forward, chin on his hands and eyes wide with rapt attention. “Cos that would be so cool.”

“We did,” Mulder said.

“Not really,” Scully said at the same time.

“What about Will?” Esther said. She seemed shocked to have spoken.

“Who’s Will?” Alex asked.

“My older brother,” Esther said, her voice growing stronger. “He has alien DNA.”

Mulder’s heart swelled a little and he looked at Scully, who lowered her eyes to her feet with a slow smile. “It’s true that both Esther’s mother and our son have some unusual blood work. But as we’ve said, being different doesn’t mean you’re less.”

“Will speaks to my mother telepathically,” Esther said. And instantly the mood in the class changed. The kids sat up, leant forward. Some of the parents shuffled in their seats and whispered to each other. The teacher clutched at her pearls. “And I feel him in the rays of the setting sun. My Mom and Dad have told me stories of the strange things that happened to them over the years but they gave up that life so that I could live a normal one. They’ve always told me I was a miracle, but I don’t really think that’s true,” she looked at them and blinked back tears. Her voice softened again, but she managed to finish. “I think it’s a miracle that they’re my parents.”

There was a weighted silence in the room. A couple of polite coughs as they made their way back to their seats. Somebody said ‘spooky’ and Esther smiled at her Dad as she sat back with the rest of the kids. The boy with the hair patted her on the back and grinned. Alex looked straight ahead and shook her head when the teacher announced it was her mother’s turn to speak.

There was a fireball in the sky that night and they all decamped to Esther’s room to watch the sun sink lower and lower. The blades of the windmill creaked slowly round on the building breeze.

“Despite our advancing age and the need to have a nap straight after class, I think the kids thought we were pretty cool in the end,” Mulder said.

“Will says you’re nuts,” Scully added.

“Tell him not to be such a giant douchebag and to come home occasionally,” Esther said, lying back on her bed.

Scully sat down. “You could tell him yourself.”

Her brow crinkled. Mulder put his hand on Scully’s shoulder and nodded. “You should, Esther.”

“How can I do that? I’m not special.” She used air quotes and a tone not dissimilar to sceptical Scully ‘back in the day’.

Scully patted her knees. “When we said you were a miracle, we meant it. A child born to a barren, ageing mother.”

“So? That’s not a miracle. It’s more an anomaly. Surely you searched for the logical, rational and oh so scientific answer to my birth.”

“We did and guess what? There was no logical, rational or scientific answer. I had no eggs. I was 54. I shouldn’t have been able to conceive. And yet here you are.”

“But that doesn’t mean I can communicate with my mysterious brother who might well be on the moon for all we know. I don’t know how.”

Mulder chuckled. Scully shook her head. “He’s not on the moon, Esther. And all you have to do is open yourself up to the realms of extreme possibility.”

Esther’s head lolled back and she took in a deep breath, but no sooner had she done that, than she gasped and sat up, clutching her temples. “Oh. My. God. No!” she said. “He’s not on the moon. He’s in Wyoming.”


End file.
